


Immersion Report

by strangeallure



Category: Original Work
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Fanart, Fanfiction, Gen, Memories, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23026180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeallure/pseuds/strangeallure
Summary: Dee hated immersion reports.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 4
Collections: Purimgifts 2020





	Immersion Report

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gostaks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gostaks/gifts).



> I read through all your prompts, and there was so much interesting stuff (I started reading _The Arcadia Project _because of you), but nothing felt quite right. Then, based on your last prompt "a story about someone doing your day job in an alternate universe where something is very different", which I took liberally, this came to me.__
> 
> _I hope you enjoy!_

Dee hated immersion reports.

It was nothing but trouble, bringing everyone in, questioning them, manipulating them into divulging any anti-government leanings – and to be fair, who wouldn’t hold at least some resentment against the bureaucracy when they had to navigate the damn beltway every day –, and using that information in an official thought retrieval request, which always took too damn long to get approved.

After the eventual approval, when subjects were already cranky from all the waiting and questioning and more waiting, she had to shuttle them across the entire building and up to the antennae room to get the process started.

The biggest reason Dee hated immersion reports was that it meant going into people’s messy memories to get all the data, visuals and audio she needed, her raw materials. There were automated extractors available now, but they were imprecise to the point of uselessness, especially when you tried to keep most of the subject’s engrams intact.

Dee didn’t want to risk a reprimand over turning a valuable member of society into a vegetable, but truth be told, it was a point of courtesy – and yes, of pride, too – to extract what she needed with minimum long-term impact.

So when the approval for her latest case came in half an hour before her work day was supposed to be over, Dee rolled her eyes before she went to collect all three subjects from their interrogation, pardon, _interview_ rooms.

While she rattled off the information on the official consent form, explaining that the procedure was going to take anywhere from twenty minutes to six hours with a possible recuperation period of up to two weeks (the vegetable option was left off of the form for obvious reasons), there was a lot of complaining about missing work and citizen’s rights, but as soon as she flashed the official judicial seal of approval, even the burly, belligerent nurse that had looked ready to strangle Dee only seconds earlier nodded her head in supplication and mumbled the affirmation drilled into every citizen, “Bureaucracy prevails,” as she pressed her thumb onto the pad to sign the form.

As per protocol, Dee sedated everyone on-site and put them into individual transportation cubes before moving them up to the antennae. Next to the elevator, several drones were on standby, ready to put subjects into their individual extraction chambers as soon as a level 5 official gave the signal. At least that part of the job had gotten easier. Dee could still remember the days when she’d had to haul two-hundred-and-fifty-pound citizens into one of the old models with her bare hands.

Putting on the suit, however, was as uncomfortable as it had always been, and still entirely her own job.

Dee took off her wig and went into the prep cube, letting the antimicrobial shower scrub away every errant piece of lint, flake of skin and hair on her body. After an aggressively hot stream of air had dried her skin, she put on the conductive gel, applying it methodically in large globs. She hated its antiseptic smell and greasy texture, but putting on too little meant the suit would be much harder to remove later. Dee had learned that the hard way. Next came the sleeve, which was molded to her body, equipped with protrusions that fit perfectly into the pattern of access ports that dotted her skull. Then it was time to step into the scaffold, pulling the metal fastenings as tight as they would go, as tight as she could make them without fainting, in order to minimize movement and slippage. She was already in for a long work day, she didn’t want to get parts of her skin fried off in the process.

After a full-body scan, the lights turned bureaucracy blue and a processing drone came in. Dee stepped onto the glass dais, gave the command, and waited for the machine to do its job.

She closed her eyes. The imminent pain was easier to bear when her brain wasn’t confused by contradictory visual inputs. This part never got any easier, but it had at least taught Dee that the human body and mind could get used to anything.

Over the next 256 seconds, her atoms were slowly smooshed together, bones contracting, muscles shrinking, skin surface area decreasing, until the processing drone had to search the dais with a highly sensitive microscope to find Dee and suck her up into a cranial needle.

Dee pushed the button in the center of her chest piece to confirm she was ready for injection, but kept her eyes squeezed shut. Her inner ear and body still provided too much unwelcome sensory information as she swirled through the viscous transmission fluid while the drone carried her to what had to be the first subject.

She had chosen the person she suspected to have seen what had happened. Ideally, the information extracted from her would line up with surveillance footage and observational data, making immersion in the other two candidates unnecessary, but Dee wasn’t counting on it.

People’s memories were fickle, unreliable things, and even visuals couldn’t always be trusted.

She wanted to go home, yes, but more than that, she wanted to do her job right.

Feeling a familiar forward motion, she knew the drone was now pushing the plunger down into the syringe, thrusting Dee straight into the head, and ultimately mind, of Petra Salerno.

 _Here we go_ , Dee thought as she entered Salerno’s brain tissue. 

Soon, she was swallowed up by a memory so bright it seemed to burn through her eyelids, heat so intense that even the sensory buffers couldn’t entirely absorb its potency. _Just perfect_ , Dee thought as she tried to withdraw just enough to orient herself in this white-hot mind.

She really hated immersion reports.


End file.
